How Microsoft's Surface Tablet is Changing the NFL

If you're a football fan, you might have heard tonight's Hall of Fame game marks the official opening of the NFL preseason, signaling the end of a bitter, forsaken, football-less half-year known as the offseason.

But it isn't just the first game of the season -- it's the first game of what Microsoft hopes is a new era in football.

Exit Theatre Mode

When ex-Microsoft executive Don Mattrick and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced their lucrative multi-year partnership during the 2013 Xbox One reveal event, we were told both sides stood to benefit. The NFL would come to Microsoft in ways unique to its platforms -- which we've seen with the NFL app on Xbox One -- and Microsoft's technology would change the game of football and the NFL.

Today's game marks the beginning of that initiative as Microsoft and the NFL introduce the Sideline Viewing System.

But what is the Sideline Viewing System?

If you're familiar with an NFL sideline, imagine the quarterback comes off the field after a series. He takes off his helmet, sits on the bench, and someone walks over and hands him a sheet of paper, or a stack of papers. On those papers are black-and-white images of the field just before he snapped the ball each play. And it shows him where his team is lined up, where the defense is lined up, and what the coverage looks like.

Microsoft Surface NFL Gallery

6 IMAGES

Fullscreen Image

Artboard 3 Copy

Artboard 3

ESC

016

016

Microsoft Surface NFL Gallery

Download Image

Captions

ESC

This is the way NFL teams have reviewed plays on the fly for years. The Sideline Viewing System is taking the same practice and updating the technology with Microsoft's Surface tablet.

Each team will receive 13 Surface tablets on the field, and 12 in the coaches' box. Using a secure, private network created by Microsoft, images from each series are beamed to the tablets near-instantly. And with the upgrade in technology comes an improvement in quality and function. These images are in full color, and dynamic: they can be pinched and zoomed, they can be moved around, flagged for later reference, and they can be drawn on -- similar to John Madden's famous use of the telestrator.

Most importantly, the devices are completely secure, and safe from intrusion or tampering.

"These [Surfaces] are owned and operated by the NFL, meaning the teams don't have access to these," Microsoft public relations manager Ryan Luckin said. "They come out just before the game. They're put away in a specialized temperature controlled cart that we built with the NFL and they're locked up the entire week."

Exit Theatre Mode

"We're going to make players a bit more efficient, a bit more productive. Typically you're looking at something that would take 20-30 seconds to get those paper printouts into the hands of players, into the hands of coaches. We've got that down to four or five seconds. That's a tangible amount of time that players and coaches can look at these images, find out key aspects, and make adjustments to the game before they go back on the field. I really think [it's] going to change the competitive landscape in a good way: letting teams be a bit more competitive."

Though Microsoft and the NFL haven't discussed the lengths of the multi-year partnership, this won't be the last time the two companies benefit from one another's expertise. While the Sideline Viewing System won't replace the traditional paper-fax system out of respect to players and coaches that prefer the analog tradition, the hope is that teams adopt the technology and embrace it for the good of the sport.

Exit Theatre Mode

"We're working with a number of teams now on the retail side of this product. We've got trainers who were using the services last year to do player health records, to do a concussion application," Luckin said. "You could take a Surface on the field with you [and] do an immediate concussion evaluation on tablets, with the before and after, and they can tell improvement."